


softly and suddenly vanish away

by Sidney Sussex (SidneySussex)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidneySussex/pseuds/Sidney%20Sussex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are more things they don't have words for than things they do, but they may be in need of a redefinition of some terms.  Ones like <i>dead</i>, and <i>alive</i>, and <i>okay</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	softly and suddenly vanish away

**Author's Note:**

> _I neither own nor profit from any of these characters; they are the property of Marvel Entertainment, LLC._
> 
> _If you see something that you think ought to be changed or improved, please feel free to let me know, if you'd like. Constructive criticism is always welcome. (And yeah, I totally mix and mash up the comics and the movie 'verse, and play around with timelines a little. Sorry.)_
> 
> _Foglets! Find out about them[here](http://www.kurzweilai.net/utility-fog-the-stuff-that-dreams-are-made-of)._
> 
> "In the midst of the word he was trying to say,  
> In the midst of his laughter and glee,  
> He had softly and suddenly vanished away---"  
> \- "The Hunting of the Snark," Lewis Carroll

**U+0031**

Operational mission failure, it's labelled.

Clint's topside, perched on a steel girder with his bow drawn and a pinch in the back of his neck where he has to hunch over a little too far to fit into the spot he's chosen. There are other agents stationed around the building – this is a S.H.I.E.L.D. takeover of a hostile tech warehouse, not an Avengers mission, and the near-silences on the radio fit comfortably around him the way they used to do back when this was the sum total of his duties. He knows them all by the sounds of their breathing; Phil, barely audible, rhythm calm and even; Natasha, quicker and quieter; Sitwell, heavy and jerky like he's trying to cut himself off so he won't be heard; Woo, with the faint wheeze that always makes Clint feel like the agent is about to start laughing, except he asked about it once and there was something about pneumonia as a child and regular lung function tests and Clint kind of lost the train of conversation after a while.

So they're all in position and waiting, cadences of heartbeats and breaths in anticipation, when there's the muffled sound of the door-breaker and then a much louder and less planned explosion, and suddenly everyone is in motion at once.

Clint follows mission parameters (mostly; there may be a few more frangible arrowheads used than were strictly specified in the initial plan), keeping his cool through what looks like a mass casting call for _Men in Black_. There are suits everywhere and a hell of a lot of guns, and Clint can't even make out his teammates' voices over the radio anymore, much less their breathing.

When they regroup, victorious, he's feeling a little crazy and a little high on adrenaline and he's kind of half-punching the air with his right fist, bow gripped firmly in his left, and Natasha gives him a look of vague tolerance and warning, _Phil will have words if you don't rein it in_.

He doesn't mind. Let Phil disapprove; he always does, at the end of a mission ( _this is work, Barton, not a game_ , and he argues, _why can't it be both, you're supposed to love what you do, right_ ). It lasts until they finish their post-mission briefings, and then somewhere in between reporting to Fury as lead agent and getting to shower and change, Phil loses the lines that mar his forehead, the dim layer that lives behind his eyes every time he has to put his colleagues at risk, and he sits on the couch in his office with Clint and lets their breathing match to one another, rhythm not quite so precise as it is while they're out on assignment.

Phil doesn't join them when they regroup today. Instead, they hear his voice over the radio, high and a little thready with – Clint isn't sure what; he'd say panic, but Phil Coulson doesn't panic when he's being faced down by a thousand pounds of incendiary living metal, so he's sure as hell not panicking at the end of a simple in-and-out mission.

Except maybe it's not so simple, because Phil reports in that he's returning to headquarters, that he'll rendezvous with the team later, and then Director Fury calls in on their secure line and declares, _operational mission failure_.

But they've achieved their objectives and all enemy personnel are dead, and Clint can't seem to figure out what it is that Fury considers _failure_.

 

**U+0032**

They're in debrief at headquarters and it's a strange feeling, the four of them standing in front of Agent Quartermain while he does the post-mission summary. Fury is standing at parade rest by the door, listening intently the same way he does when it's Phil summarizing, and Natasha and Sitwell are the picture of respect. Woo is serene, like he always is no matter what's going on around him, so that makes Clint the exception.

Clint is edgy and uncertain, fidgeting a little even though he's perfectly aware he's doing it. This is supposed to be Phil's show to run – he likes debriefing a little too much, honestly – and the fact that he isn't here is more than just unusual. He twitches his way through full summaries, through his fellow agents' reports, through his own ( _there were a lot of guys in suits, I shot them_ ), and then interrupts when Quartermain tries to bring the meeting to a close.

"What about Coulson's report?"

"I've already had Coulson's report," Fury speaks up from the doorway.

"Well, what about the rest of us?"

"Agent Barton," and Fury eases himself into the middle of the room, moving low and dangerous in a way that reminds them all he is the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a reason. "Are you suggesting you would like this briefing to be extended?" The sarcastic eyebrow raise, Clint thinks, is really unnecessary.

"No, sir. I – "

"Are you questioning my authority? Or, for that matter, Agent Quartermain's?"

He knows when he's beaten (and it's usually anytime he's up against Fury). "No, sir."

"Then I suggest you find yourself occupied post-haste."

Clint is an idiot in many ways, but not taking the hint from Director Fury has never been one of them. He steps around the director (no eye contact because he's not entirely sure he's not in trouble, and he's kind of wary about eye contact anyway, and Fury's, ah, condition doesn't exactly make it less awkward) and makes a break for the door before Fury thinks of anything else he wants to say.

He might go down to the gym, or the range, and yeah, this is his life, that to relax after a mission he works out and trains, but it could be (has been) much worse, so he's easily satisfied. He might do one of those things, but the thing is, Agent Coulson may have given his report, but _Phil_ hasn't given one to Clint yet, so instead, he finds himself in the corridor in front of Phil's office, hand raised to knock.

Phil and Clint have a… _thing_.

Clint doesn't know the proper word for it, or even if there is one. He doesn't want to say _relationship_ , because that implies a kind of conversation they've never had, a kind of commitment never promised (Phil hasn't asked; Clint doesn't dare). He doesn't want to use any of the terms he's heard, _boyfriend_ and _partner_ and _lover_ , because they are all wrong for different reasons; Phil seems too stoic for _boyfriend_ and too reticent for _lover_ , and _partner_ evokes images of body armour and ballistic knives in an abandoned Russian base, assignments that are classified and that they would both rather pretend never happened anyway. But Phil is _something_ to Clint, something communicated in fingers tangling through hair, in kisses that go from awkward to soft and open-mouthed, in nights spent falling asleep beside one another fully dressed on the couch in the office, Phil's tie loosened, Clint's hand on his arm.

So for whatever the _thing_ is that they have, Clint knocks.

There's no answer.

He tries again, in case Phil didn't hear, and then a third time, for no reason other than that the light in the office is on and it isn't like Phil to leave the lights on if he's not around. When there's no answer he thinks, _gym_ , but then he gets a patented Clint Barton Good Idea (he should know by now that they never are, but he has a habit of landing on his feet) and decides, instead, _ceiling ducts_.

Three minutes later, he's reaching for the drop panel he knows is above the guest chair in Phil's office when there's a voice – Phil, and he sounds exhausted and reedy and not the slightest bit good.

"Don't you have anywhere to be, Barton?"

He hasn't been Barton outside missions in months. "Since when is that my name?"

" _Clint._ Shouldn't you be recuperating or training or something?"

"I came to see you. Sir." The emphasis on _sir_ is perhaps unfair, but Clint is still stinging from _Barton_ and not as inclined as he should be to forgive and forget.

"I appreciate it. But I'm busy."

Okay, _Barton_ he can overlook once, but _I'm busy_? After they've just finished a mission, before Clint has even seen him, with this whole weird post-mission thing where he left without them and didn't come to debriefing and won't even answer Clint's knock at his office door?

He reaches for the panel again.

"Don't even think about it, Clint."

His hand jerks back, as if the edges of the tile had burnt his fingers. Okay, then, if that's how it's going to be. He'll go to the gym, like he should have all along, and someone else can bring Phil coffee and keep him entertained late at night when he's finishing off mission paperwork and signing form after form and it's all (at least in Clint's opinion) mind-numbingly boring, except that Phil is there.

Something strikes him as he's walking away down the corridor, and he comes back, knocks on Phil's door again. "I know you're in there now," he calls. "No use pretending you're not."

"What do you need, Clint?"

"Are you okay?"

"What – " cut off, and Phil recalibrates, like he's so often doing when Clint stomps roughshod all over the line between professional and, well, Clint. He's a little softer, a little more tolerant, a moment later when he asks, "What do you mean?"

"I haven't even seen you since we called the mission. Are you okay? Are you hurt? Why are you locking yourself in your office?" _Why am I not allowed to come in and see you?_

"I'm fine, Clint," and the end of his name seems almost to shiver into a dry laugh, hollow and restrained. "Just busy. We'll talk later."

Clint doesn't believe it – something isn't falling into place properly here, some timbre that isn't right in Phil's voice, some note in his insistence that grates against his thoughts – but there's nothing he can do about it; as Hawkeye, he would be disobeying a direct order, and as Clint, his attempts at reaching out have already been rejected.

_Gym_ , he tells himself, and leaves for somewhere he can be more easily distracted.

 

**U+0033**

He wakes up in the morning and the first thing he says is, "JARVIS, did Phil leave the office last night?" He's got a dull feeling in the pit of his stomach that knows the answer before JARVIS says it, because he didn't call it a night until after three, and when Phil is at work that late, he typically ends up knocking softly on the doorframe to Clint's quarters, and then curled around him on the bed trying to steal an hour or two of sleep before they have to get up and face the day.

Today, Phil isn't here and JARVIS answers in the negative and Clint rubs his forehead with his fingertips because something is still not right and he doesn't know what.

"What's he working on?" he hazards, because if he can't get any information from Phil, he can try with JARVIS. (It's even less likely to succeed, but it'll keep him occupied for a while, and he might get something out of it, so it's worth bugging the AI a little.)

"I'm afraid that's classified, sir."

"Why is it taking so long?"

"It's been one night, Master Barton. Hardly substantial on the scale of the Avengers Initiative."

All right, fine, but it's substantial on the scale of Phil's warm hands and soft breathing and the fact that Clint hasn't seen him since before yesterday's _operational mission failure_ and he wants to know what's going on.

"Is there breakfast?" he asks, in part because he's formulating a plan (at least, on the Clint Barton scale of planning, which is not particularly devious) and in part just to be obnoxious for a little while longer.

"In the kitchen, Master Barton. As usual." Clint could swear he can hear JARVIS' eyes rolling.

He piles some food onto a plate, not really looking at it, and pours coffee. It's Tony-style, so strong it would probably hold its shape even without the mug, but it'll serve its purpose, especially if Phil has really been up working all night. (Clint wouldn't put it past him; it's not the first time.)

Knocking on the office door again, he says, "JARVIS told me you're in there, you know," and is more than a little rebuffed when Phil says, "Still busy, Clint."

"Brought you breakfast."

There's a pause, a hesitation from the other side of the door and a beat of silence, before Phil says, "I already ate."

Clint isn't dumb, and even as Phil's thanking him for the thought, he knows it's a lie. Phil hasn't left the office; JARVIS has already told him that. What he doesn't know is why Phil feels the need to lie to keep him away.

_If you don't want me around_ , he thinks but isn't brave enough to say, _you can just say so._

"I'm just gonna leave this here," he says, setting the plate and the mug down outside the office. Phil can be like this if he wants, hide away behind locked doors and keep secrets, but Clint doesn't have to have any part of it.

He leaves for the range, takes out his frustrations in an extended sparring session that afternoon with Natasha (or rather, has his frustrations taken out on him, slammed repeatedly into the mat without stopping; it's somehow satisfying for reasons he can't quite put his finger on). He doesn't try to talk to Phil again, though he does shoot the occasional dark glower at the security cameras as he's passing by (it's childish, sure, but then, Phil is hiding in his office and calling him _Barton_ and if this is some kind of childishness contest, Clint doesn't think he's the one winning it).

He supposes it was an inevitability, but he really thought Phil would have the respect to say something to his face.

 

**U+0034**

There's a briefing. Not a mission briefing or a regularly-scheduled session, but a special assembly called by the Director himself.

When Clint arrives, he finds the entire Avengers Initiative already there, as well as a significant contingent of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Tony's up at the front of the room, lounging over one of the executive chairs and chatting with a ponytailed man in a too-large suit over a Hawaiian shirt. They're nodding, clearly have a rapport of some kind even though Clint has never seen the guy before, and Fury's face is stonier than usual as he watches them.

Finally, everyone shuffles into silence as Fury stands at the front of the room and glares at them. (Clint wants to learn that glare, but he's not sure he wants to pay the price. He's convinced that's what cost Fury his other eye.)

"Some of you are aware," he says, silencing someone's clinking teaspoon with a glance, "that S.H.I.E.L.D. recently conducted a takeover at an enemy supply site."

Most of the agents nod; most of the Avengers look sidelong at Clint and Natasha, who are sometimes teammates and sometimes members of S.H.I.E.L.D. and never completely accepted by either, curse of divided loyalties.

"That supply site," he continues, "was an emergent technology hot zone. What we recovered from that warehouse was impressively futuristic; Dr. Kennedy here – " indicating the man with the ponytail " – and Mr. Stark have been examining the… assets."

"Don't hurt their feelings! Machines are people, too," Tony calls plaintively, and the expression on Fury's face grows even colder, if that's at all possible.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has decided that, as our enemies are making use of these technologies, it's appropriate for you to be familiar with them. I assume it goes without saying that this is highly classified. This _will_ go in your files and you _will_ be expected to remember this session, so make yourselves comfortable, folks; you're gonna be here a while."

As Fury sits down at the head of the conference table and turns his attention to the scientist, Dr. Kennedy, Clint whispers under his breath to Natasha, "Really? Robots?"

It earns him Fury's chilliest look. "This briefing is top priority, Barton," he says, low, penetrating, " _especially_ for you."

He doesn't explain that any further. Clint knows better than to ask.

They go through a series of robotics demonstrations, some Clint recognizes from Tony's lab, some that are new and half-built and prompt Tony to wave one hand vaguely in the air and go, "… yeah, so, you get the idea," when they don't perform completely as intended. Natasha snickers and asks if this is how well the enemy technology works, too, but even though she's Fury's favourite, she gets the same glare he gave Clint.

When Kennedy demonstrates the Life Model Decoy, though, they grow quiet. This is no hastily-assembled mock-up put together for the seminar; this is a fully-operational piece of technology. It moves like a real human being, it answers with natural speech patterns, its eyes glitter with intelligence.

And it has Fury's face.

Nobody says anything about why that is. It's obvious that this is not something that's new to S.H.I.E.L.D., because even a few of the agents in the briefing are nodding in recognition (either that, or they are far better at hiding their surprise than the Avengers). It must have been a contingency plan for some time, in case anything ever happened to Director Fury – and Clint suddenly finds himself wondering if Fury is, in fact, the only person at S.H.I.E.L.D. with an LMD.

When he asks, Kennedy hums a noncommittal response, looks to Fury, and Fury says, "Classified, Agent Barton."

"This whole meeting is classified."

" _Extremely_ classified," and Clint, after a few false starts, knows when to shut up.

The LMD is the creepiest thing he's ever seen (then again, so is the regular Director Fury, and it occurs to Clint briefly that he has no proof either one of them is a living, breathing human being, and suddenly he completely understands the meaning of the phrase _uncanny valley_ ), but it's not the weirdest. The weirdest is the next thing, which Sal Kennedy presents with a gesture.

"So this is a utility fog," he says, and Clint glances quickly around the room to make sure he isn't the only confused one here. He's not.

"Uh," he ventures, "there's, uh, nothing there."

"Isn't there?" Kennedy grins gleefully and twists his hand in the air, and suddenly he's holding a multi-faceted shape, glittering metal object with no apparent features of interest except that it _wasn't in his hand a second ago_.

Tony's grinning, enjoying everyone else's shock as he reaches out, holds his hand over the metal object, and it dissolves, flowing around his fingers and encasing his hand in a silver gauntlet. The lustre shifts, changes, and then the glove is red, gold highlights forming themselves on his knuckles, and Kennedy chuckles. "Very funny."

"Okay, what the hell is that?" Clint asks, because if this is some crazy new Iron Man tech where the armour is invisible or something, he kind of wants in on that. Maybe Tony can make him one. For tactical reasons, of course. (Not for sneaking around S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters with a tiny, handmade blow gun. Clint wouldn't do that. There are definitely not already three or four citations on his record for doing exactly that.)

"Utility fog, like I said," Kennedy tells them. "This is a cloud of nanobots, a hundred microns or so each in diameter. They can assemble into any shape – " he flicks his hand at the glove Tony's wearing and it disperses " – or separate into the air so that they're completely invisible to the naked eye."

That's awesome. And fucking _weird_. "So, what, these things are just in the air around here all the time? Invisible? Are they watching us shower, because, I mean, that's – "

"Barton," says Fury wearily from beside him, "if you don't shut your goddamn mouth and let the man talk, I swear," but he can't even be bothered to finish his threat, letting it trail off and turning his gaze back to Kennedy.

"They could be," Kennedy agrees, "but they're not. Foglets are actually hideously expensive. We've been working on some experimental low-resolution ones, bigger than these, so you can actually see them, but Director Fury asked me to demonstrate these because – "

"Because that's what they were preparing in that warehouse," Tony finishes, eager to make the declaration.

"If our enemies have that kind of technology," Bruce says softly, "that's kind of a game-changer."

Fury frowns, stands, waves at the air around him as if to swat invisible bugs. (Clint can't quite suppress a grin, but he knows enough to hide it behind a hand and clear his throat. It won't fool Fury, but there won't really be anything he can say, either.)

"Let me emphasize," he says, while Kennedy leans against the wall and pokes at the air around him, watching it coalesce into tiny, glittering swarms, "that this is _experimental_ technology. We don't know that any of this is in use yet, but we also don't know that it isn't."

"We have reason to believe that they were experimenting with imprinting consciousnesses onto the foglets," Kennedy says. "Transferring everything that constitutes sentience into the nanocomputers."

"'Reason to believe?'" Natasha echoes, and something in her voice is sharp-edged and cuts into Clint's thoughts so that he sits up straighter.

"There was some… evidence," Kennedy hesitates, looking for guidance, "and I don't know, the clearance level of this meeting…"

"… is not high enough to get into detail," says Fury, but he's not only looking at the Avengers when he says it; his eyes are focused, too, on a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents clumped together at one side of the long table, clearly not exactly senior officials. "That information is on a need-to-know basis, and no one in this briefing needs to know."

Natasha sure looks like she thinks she needs to know, and if she does, then Clint figures he probably does, too. She's a lot better about stuff like this than he is, though, and guards her silence under Fury's scrutiny.

The briefing goes on for a while longer, Kennedy talking about the properties of the utility fog (what each nano-foglet looks like, how fast it can move, how strong it is, how compact it can get and how dispersed) and Tony interjecting with comments about how it can be used. Clint is kind of surprised that Tony's playing it straight; he's thought of half a dozen innuendos and inappropriate jokes to make about this foglet stuff by now, but Tony is actually being serious.

When they're done and Sal Kennedy has left, Fury motions to Natasha. He beckons Clint over, too, but with warning in his eyes, like he's not entirely sure he should be doing it. Tony's standing beside him, but as soon as the director opens his mouth to speak, Natasha interrupts.

"Sir," she says, but her eyes are all for Clint, "we should do this in your office."

Fury doesn't ask how she knows what he's going to say, doesn't ask why, just stares at her for a second, then at Clint, and then nods. "My office. Five minutes. Stark, that means you, too."

 

**U+0035**

They're arranged in some kind of protective circle or something around Clint, and it's unnerving. Fury's sitting behind his desk; Tony's standing beside him, hands twitching restlessly at his sides; Natasha is in one of the plush guest chairs, but where Clint is angled toward Tony and Fury, she's turned her chair so that she's facing Clint.

Fury doesn't say anything, just pushes a sheet of paper across his desk.

Clint takes it, pays almost no attention to the words printed across the top in uneven typewriter letters, CERTIFICATE OF DEATH 616-07-854351. It doesn't really have any meaning for him, not until he hits blank number one, NAME OF DECEASED, and the name filled in above the crooked line says, _Philip J Coulson_.

That's when it takes him a second to breathe, swift punch to the gut followed by tumbling thoughts, _but wait, I talked to him, he just, last night_ , and the date on the certificate (blank 3a, month-day-year) is yesterday's, the hour much earlier than their most recent conversation.

There is a stamp in the corner of the certificate, dark blue ink against the too-clear black-and-white, and it reads, OPERATIONAL MISSION FAILURE.

"What the hell are you trying to do to me?" he demands, voice hoarse with the burst of adrenaline and the heart rate that's still way too fast. "What is this, some kind of test? Joke? Is this why Phil wouldn't talk to me?" He realizes too late that he's said _Phil_ to Director Fury's face, but he doesn't care; obviously, they know this is going to have some effect on him, or he wouldn't be here. "What is this?"

"It's not a joke, Agent Barton," says Fury calmly. "Agent Coulson is officially deceased as of thirteen hundred hours yesterday afternoon."

"And _un_ officially?"

"Unofficially he's… no longer on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s payroll," Fury says, which clarifies absolutely fucking nothing, and Natasha lays a hand on Clint's arm as he's starting to get up.

Tony holds up a hand of his own and says, "Look, Clint, uh, you know how Sal said we had reason to believe they were imprinting consciousnesses onto foglets in that warehouse?"

Natasha's hand tightens on his elbow, but it's not fast enough or firm enough to stop him whirling around (the death certificate goes flying; Tony catches it out of the air and all Clint can think of is that he probably didn't have to, that there's probably a fucking _foglet_ hovering around just waiting to snag it before it hits the ground) and bolting for the door.

He makes it a few corridors away before he stumbles, sagging into a nearby doorway and sliding down the frame until he's on the floor, head in his hands, trying to think. Phil Coulson is dead, except not dead, and there are tiny, invisible robots in the air, robots with supercomputer brains that can become anything anywhere anytime, and forty-eight hours ago he was lying with his head in Phil's lap laughing at the reluctant scratch of pen on paper as Phil tried to focus on signing off on forms, and the names he didn't have for Phil were ones like _boyfriend_ and _partner_ and not, starkly illogical, _the deceased_.

The rules of the real world have slid sideways and melted into shapes Clint doesn't recognize, and he needs to somehow take them in his hands and mould them back into something that makes sense; he needs to see Phil.

 

**U+0036**

This time, when he knocks, it's a shaky, arrhythmic staccato like his heart and he doesn't wait for Phil to answer (or not answer) before he calls out, "I know you're there, Phil, just open the goddamn door, or _can_ you even open a door anymore, I don't even know, Phil, just, just let me in…" and thank God that's when the knob turns, the door swings open, because Clint doesn't even know what he would have said next or when or if he would have stopped talking.

There's no one in the office (except that's not true, is it, _Phil_ is there, or something that has his brain, and jesus christ, what kind of thought is that).

"Where the hell are you?" Clint is tired. There's no brain-to-mouth filter, not that there is ever much of one.

"I thought it would be easier if I were… if there were nothing to see," and that's Phil's disembodied voice, but Phil is dead and his stolen brain is imprinted on the air.

"Where are you?"

Something in the air shivers, then coalesces beside him, gunmetal-grey haze at his shoulder, and Phil's voice somewhere in the middle of it. "There was a… miscalculation."

"Operational mission failure," Clint tells him, numb.

"I know. I signed off on the death certificate."

And that, that is just fucking ridiculous, and maybe Clint is losing his grip on reality (such as it is, because who even knows what that means anymore) but he starts laughing, full-on, doubled-over laughing for no reason at all other than that something with Phil's brain signed off on his death certificate and he's not sure if that's the premise of a terrible body-snatcher B-movie ( _there is no body_ , his brain points out) or just a nightmare he should be waking up from any second now with a gasp and a sick feeling in his stomach (but he doesn't); all he knows is that for some reason, this is hilarious, and he still thinks he's laughing when he feels the sting in the corners of his eyes, the knife-ache in his throat and realizes, this isn't funny at all.

"Are you done?" Phil – or a swarm of nano-doppelgangers – asks him, and he swallows what might be laughter or dry sobs or something he can't even recognize anymore and says, "Yeah, I – I can be done," and it's so unlike anything they've ever said to each other before that it almost helps, and he starts to try to even out his breathing.

It occurs to him that he won't be able to recognize Phil that way over the radio anymore, and his heartbeat stutters and he buries his fingers in his hair, tugging sharply to pull himself back to reality (sort of).

"I'm done," he says, and the calm tone of his voice might fool a robot computer, but it won't fool Phil, and it doesn't.

"Me, too," says Phil, and means it in a completely different way, but even though his voice has a strange, high-pitched buzz underlying it, just past where Clint's ears can make it out properly, it's still Phil's voice and Clint can still hear the undertones of dry amusement in it and it sounds so much like Phil that Clint doesn't know whether to be relieved or terrified or grateful.

"How," he asks, "how do we know you're… you? Not some robot infiltration drone or something."

"Clint," says Phil, "what robot infiltration drone do you know that could keep up with my job?"

He has a good point. "Not to mention all of us," Clint adds, and the haze in the air pulls together a little more, drifts a little nearer.

"Would this be easier if I looked… like I used to?" Phil asks.

"You can do that?"

"Not exactly," he admits. "But I can come pretty close. Not enough nanobots to make it perfect."

"Uh," says Clint. "That, uh, that might kinda freak me out a little. Can I… see?"

"You might want to close your eyes; this could be a little disorienting," and he does, and something taps on his shoulder a moment later to tell him to open them again.

It's… not exactly Phil, but to a first approximation it might be, like if a modern artist somewhere decided to sculpt him out of fibre-optics or something, translucent and with airspace in between the solid points. It _looks_ like Phil, and there's even the faint hint of a smile, and of course, he's impeccably dressed in suit and tie, and _God_ , he's –

Clint waves a hand through the illusion, and nanobots swarm around his fingers.

"Ow," Phil says mildly.

"That didn't hurt," Clint says.

"Nothing does anymore," Phil replies, and oh, jesus, Clint hasn't even thought of that.

"Did it… do you remember," he starts, and as usual, his better judgment doesn't catch up with him until halfway through the sentence. (To be fair, it never used to catch up at all, so he's improving.)

"Dying?" Phil asks, because whether he's a human or a hundred million computers, he still reads Clint's mind just as easily.

"Yeah," says Clint. "What was that like?"

"Unremarkable," Phil says, and there's a sort of ripple through the air like he's shrugging. "I was lining up a shot, and when I tried to pull the trigger, it wasn't there anymore. My gun was on the ground, and so was I – my body."

"And you were just kinda floating around in the air?"

"That sums it up fairly well."

"It didn't hurt?"

Phil frowns, and it's obvious he's trying to answer honestly. "I think," he says finally, "perhaps the consciousness transfer was programmed to occur when death was inevitable. I may have missed the actual dying part of the process."

"That makes sense," Clint agrees, like he has any idea at all.

The faint sort-of-smile turns into a real one, and Phil nudges Clint (where they touch, points of colour gather together to lend density to his hand, so that it feels almost the way it should) and says, "It was just a flesh wound."

Clint grimaces. It's just the sort of terrible joke he would make, and he's not sure if he's more appalled that Phil went there, or that he went there before Clint could say it. He's also kind of jolted to realize that Phil doesn't have flesh anymore, much less wounds, but that's kind of a disturbing thought and he puts it aside, focusing on what Phil does have (swarms of tiny robots that imitate perfect creases in his trousers, of course, because God forbid Phil not be completely put-together even though he's technically _dead_ ).

He doesn't really know how this works anymore. He can't touch Phil without warning him first so that there's something substantial beneath his fingers; he can't move too quickly because he'll send eddies through the air that blur the edges of Phil's form and definition. He doesn't know anything about robots, or foglets, or whatever, and he's pretty sure that a morning of being briefed by Tony Stark and some guy in a garish toucan shirt is not enough to tell him anything useful.

Then again, he doesn't even know what would _be_ useful in a situation like this. He's not accustomed to having a… well, he's not accustomed to thinking about things like whether Phil needs to defragment or does he have a firewall or can Tony Stark hack him now like he's some kind of Cray supercomputer.

Tony _better_ not try to hack him. Clint can think of a few good places in Tony's workshop to put an incendiary arrow, and a few good places in Tony, too.

Not that Clint thinks Phil needs to be defended; he's pretty sure a swarm of foglets is damn near all-powerful, and isn't _that_ a terrifying prospect, that Phil Coulson might be even _better_ at his job and his life (such as it is) than he used to be. So yeah, Clint doesn't really know how any of this works, and Phil has been a foglet for a day and is probably already some kind of expert, and this is just fucking _weird_ , and Clint is tired.

"Are you okay?" Phil asks, and no, that's backwards, Phil is dead and shouldn't Clint be asking him that question? But then there is a warm hand on the back of his neck (warm; that's kind of strange, but it's also nice, and really, Clint should probably recalibrate his scale for _strange_ ), and he relaxes involuntarily into the touch, and instead of protesting and deflecting the question, he just nods.

"Are you?"

Phil could laugh at him now, could point out that he's dead and a robot hive mind and a swarm of microscopic bits of spiky metal, because if Clint is perfectly honest, it's a ridiculous question, but he doesn't. He just clears his throat a little, the same way he always does when they talk about things that are important, and says quietly, "Yeah."

Clint has questions – for Phil, for Tony, for Sal Kennedy, for anyone who's willing to answer. He wants to know if Phil is safe, now, for a while; he wants to know about backups and protection and computer errors and other nightmares he's not entirely willing to voice just yet. He wants to know, _needs_ to know, but he can wait.

For the time being, he'll just let himself feel out the knowledge that the universe could have taken Phil from him and somehow didn't, and the rest of it is really just the details anyway.


End file.
